One Lucky Cowboy (13 page)

   The hostess seated them and Slade fought the impulse to go to the bathroom, crawl out the window, and go home. He opened the menu and willed himself to sit still.

   "I think I'll have the rib eye topped with garlic and mushrooms, baked potato, dinner salad, and iced tea," he said. There was no way he was trusting a single beer in his system. Even if he was eye candy, he didn't intend to go past the front door of the woman's house.

   "Not me. I never eat steak. Let's see. I'll have the Cajun lime tilapia and a Margarita."

   The waiter disappeared with their orders.

   Elaine propped her elbows on the table and propped her chin on the shelf made by turning her fingers inward. "Now let's talk about you. You are about thirty. You have never been married and you have no children."

   "Pretty much sums it up," Slade said.

   "Oh, no, it barely gets the ball rolling, darlin'. Now we're going to really talk. Why haven't you been married? My guess—and I'm a good judge of people—is that you don't want to be. You like your ranch and you have your grandmother to take care of. A wife would interfere with both. Right? Of course I'm right. I know you already even though we've only danced a few times and ridden half an hour to Gainesville from Ardmore."

   Slade took a deep breath. "I'd like to have a wife someday. Someone who loves ranching as much as I do and gets a smile on her face when a new calf is born." He hoped that would let all the helium out of the balloon she was floating with his name on it.

   "Honey, they don't make women like that. If one says she likes living out on a remote ranch south of Ringgold, Texas, you pull up your Wranglers and go on home because you've got a lyin' bitch in bed with you. And a smile when a baby calf is born. Yuk! That would be even worse than smiling after childbirth. It might happen, but it's fake. Be careful of those kind of women."

   "You are full of advice," he said.

   Their drinks arrived. Slade stirred three packages of sugar into his tea and Elaine seductively licked the salt from one side of her drink. He remembered the way Jane had downed half a mug of beer.

   Elaine cocked her head to one side, obviously trying to be coy. "On to the children issue now, since I was right about the wife business. You are an only child, and you know nothing about children. Probably never been around very many in your life unless it was up at your cousin Beau's place a few times a year. I understand he comes from a big family. Too damn bad he's already taken. I might have set my cap for him. But don't worry. I don't go after married men when there're plenty of good-looking single ones struttin' around."

   He thought,
I'm on my way to the courthouse
tomorrow morning with the first woman I see after I let
you out of the truck tonight, and from now on I walk like
an old man using a cane.

   He said, "Well, that's a good thing. Milli would scratch your eyes out if you looked cross-eyed at her husband. I heard she flattened one of his old girlfriends with one good right hook." That brought back the memory of Jane's "good right hook" under Kristy's chin. He wondered if Milli and Jane had sprung from the same family tree root. It didn't look possible on the outside, what with Milli being a Mexican. However, there was that little bit of English coming from her maternal grandmother, so she and Jane could have possibly shared the same DNA from a thousand years before.

   "That's why I steer clear of married men. So tell me, am I right about you?"

   "I love kids. Hope to have a yard full of them someday."

   She giggled. "You almost had me. For a minute there I thought you were serious, but you have a dry sense of humor. I like it."

   She tossed the book aside and pulled back the curtains to look out at the moon. They'd be finished with dinner by now and off to see a movie. Was he laughing as hard as he did when they watched
The Bucket List
, or was it a chick flick? Was Elaine sniffling and Slade yawning?

   To get away from her own thoughts, she wandered down the hall, through the den and dining room, and into the living room, where Ellen and Nellie had set up a card table. Two other older ladies from near Alvord had come to play bridge. They had arrived about the time Slade left, tossed their purses in a recliner, and sat down to play some serious cards. Myra was short, stocky, and wore her gray hair in a frizzy do that would rival Kizzy Jane in the old
Roots
series. Jeannie was tall, thin, and had a little gray bun on top of her head. They both wore jeans, T-shirts, sneakers, and serious expressions.

   Jane had escaped to her room with Ellen's book as soon as the introductions were over. Her attention was held by the book for a few minutes, by the twinkling stars a little longer, by the waning moon—until she blinked a couple of times, and then she found herself wandering back through the house.

   "Want to play?" Ellen asked Jane.

   "I'll raise you ten," Myra said.

   "I'll see your ten and raise you twenty. Jane, honey, be a dear and mix another blender of daiquiris for Ellen and bring in three beers for the rest of us," Nellie said.

   Jane's eyes widened. She was sure she heard Nellie tell Slade to go have a wonderful date, that she and Ellen had invited a couple of friends for bridge. Didn't look like bridge to her. She rolled two limes on the countertop until they were squishy, then squeezed them into a measuring cup. She poured two ounces into a stainless steel shaker, added three ounces of Bacardi, two teaspoons of powdered sugar, and a few ice cubes and shook it until the outside of the container was cold.

   "Cuban. My favorite," Ellen said when she sipped it.

   "What's the difference?" Nellie asked.

   "Have a sip. It's just different than those sweet straw berry or the new peach ones," Ellen said.

   Nellie tipped it up. "Good stuff. Make a whole pitcher full and bring us some glasses. Girls, you're going to love it. Now, I'll see your five, Myra, and raise you ten. You're bluffing."

   "We'll see," Myra laughed.

   "I thought you were playing bridge," Jane said.

   "So did our husbands for the past forty years. They had poker night and we started out playing bridge like good little wives. We chased babies and changed diapers. Exchanged recipes. All those kind of things," Myra explained. "Then the kids were grown and none of us wanted to play cards on Friday anymore until Ellen came visiting and taught us to play poker. That was twenty years ago."

   "But why not just tell Slade the truth?" Jane asked.

   "He's not man enough to take it. Men folks tend to think poker is their game. Want to sit in on a few hands?"

   "I'll bartend."

   Ellen finished off the daiquiri. "You don't fool me, girl. You know how to play Texas Hold 'Em and you'd own this ranch if you played. I can see it in your eyes. Nellie can't stand losing so she'd wind up putting the ranch up on a bet and you'd own it. Sure you don't want to play, just to see Slade's face when he walks in and finds out he's working for you?"

   Jane smiled. She didn't want to play for a very good reason. If she just made drinks all evening, Myra and Jeannie would go home and only remember her as the new maid slash driver slash bartender. They might talk on the drive back to Bowie about how Nellie had done good when she hired some help, but the next time they came to play poker she would be gone and forgotten. If John came looking and she had whipped them all soundly at poker, they'd remember a lot more about her.

   "I'll just make daiquiris. Who's the designated driver?"

   "I am. Put extra rum in mine," Jeannie laughed. "Honey, I could out-drink, out-bluff, and out-cuss a sailor. I won't wreck the pickup or get a ticket on the way home, I promise."

   Jane thought Ellen and Nellie were a rare breed. She could scarcely believe that there were two more unusual elderly women in the same neck of the woods. Had her mother lived to be an old woman, would she have been like this foursome? Was her grandmother the same kind of woman when she wasn't wearing a black suit and sitting at the head of a conference table in the oil company?

   "You know who I miss?" Myra said. "Ouch, why'd you kick me?"

   Nellie shot her a dirty look. "Foot jerked."

   Myra glanced at Jane, who'd headed for the kitchen. "Oh! Oh, my! Now I understand. Well, I'll see your twenty and raise you thirty."

"See what?" Jeannie asked.

Ellen tilted her head toward the kitchen and winked.

   "I still don't see. Betcha if…" Her eyes widened and she shook her head. "Well, I'll be damned. Talk about fate. If that don't beat all. You going to tell her?"

   "Not yet. Ellen and I are waiting for her to tell us," Nellie said.

   Jane returned with a pitcher of daiquiris and three glasses on a tray. "Where do you want it?"

   "Put it on the end table. Ellen can reach it and keep us refilled. Sure you don't want to play?" Nellie asked.

   "No, I think I'll sit out on the deck for a while. You ladies get too tipsy, I'll drive you home and you can claim your car tomorrow," she said.

   "Ain't happenin'," Jeannie said. "I could take a bath in beer and still be able to drive. I don't have Indian blood like Myra, who can't hold her liquor. She'll drink a beer and one daiquiri and have a hangover. It's in her genes. I come from a long line of Scottish cattle rustlers."

   Jane shook her head in disbelief. With her gray bun and veined hands, Jeannie looked more like the offspring of a holiness Sunday school teacher than the descendant of cattle rustlers.

   "It's the truth, sure as I sit here," Myra said. "My great-grandpa was one of those Taovayas Indians from up around Spanish Fort. Did you know that town used to have several brothels, two or three banks, and enough churches to keep the patrons of the brothels and saloons out of hell? Anyway, rumor has it that my great-grandpa stole one of the ladies right out of the brothel and married her before his parents knew anything about it. She was part Taovayas, too, so I've got the blood that doesn't do well with drinking. Jeannie can drink and doesn't have the headache, but she's a mean drunk, so I'll keep her from having too many."

   "Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you all go home with me to Amarillo for a week? Jeannie, you could drive, since Nellie and I aren't allowed. We could shop and party and play cards. Maybe hop over the line at Randlett and play a few hands of blackjack at the tables."

   "You're crazy," Nellie said.

   "Maybe not," Myra said.

   Jane headed for the deck. Nellie would never go home with Ellen. She wouldn't leave the ranch during the busy season—or Slade, either, for that matter. Ellen had told her earlier that week that Nellie never went anywhere.

   She kicked off her sneakers, removed her socks, and stretched out on the chaise lounge. Wiggling her toes, she noticed the nails were chipped. She hadn't had a pedicure since her wedding day. That left a bitter taste, and she decided right then that she would never paint her toenails pale pink again. They might even be natural the rest of her life.

   At eleven o'clock she heard the ladies leave. Jeannie slung a little gravel when she peeled out but Jane figured that was to make Myra squeal and Nellie and Ellen giggle. They'd only been gone a few minutes when Slade slid open the glass doors and joined her on the deck.

   "Where did you come from? How'd the date go?" she asked, hoping her voice didn't betray her feelings.

   He wore his knit pajama bottoms and his hair was still wet from a recent shower. Crimson crept up her cheeks as she imagined what had happened that he'd need a shower the minute he got home.

   "I drove up about the same time Jeannie peeled out. That woman will be the next one to get her license taken from her. The date went fine."

   "Are you calling her again?"

   "Probably not."

   "Then it didn't go fine."

   "Oh, yes it did. It was very fine, as a matter of fact. She called me handsome eye candy," Slade argued.

   "She was just buttering you up. What'd she want?"

   "Nothing except to be right about everything," Slade admitted.

   "Then it wasn't a fine date," Jane said.

   "Yes, it was," he argued.

   "How can you say that when your tone said you were disgusted about the way she had to be right about everything?"

   "A fine first date is when you come home abso lutely convinced that you either want to see the woman again or you don't. I don't want to see her, so it was a fine date."

   Jane's heart skipped a beat before that little niggling voice called a conscience reminded her that Slade didn't want to take her out even on a first date. Therefore, Kristy and Elaine had gotten considerably further with him than she had. Not that she wanted him to ask her on a real date anyway, but it was a bit of a blow to her faltering ego to know that he didn't want to do so.

   "Tell me something," he continued. "If you were one of those psychic people or you could read palms or whatever those people do that know all about a person without knowing them, what would you say about me?"

   
If I was a psychic or palm reader, I wouldn't be here
right now. I would have seen through John and Ramona
from the beginning. So that's a crazy question.